


Always Ahead of Us

by sachantquiladesailes_98



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Family Drama, I write to deal with the angst, Jughead Jones-centric, Sad Ending, Sins of the Father, Unresolved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13813935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sachantquiladesailes_98/pseuds/sachantquiladesailes_98
Summary: So for a while there, the show was rough, no? This is how I coped. I scribbled down angsty little one shots so that I could continue to love my Jughead despite his destructive decisions. This is canon more or less/ plus additions from yours truly that could have happened- who's to say they didn't? up to midway of s2e11 so... if you've seen up to there, you should know what to expect. If not, what are you doing reading this, huh? Get it together...Let me know what you think or if you have any less depressing ideas for this pairing? For some reason, I can only come up with tragic separation stories. Go figure.





	Always Ahead of Us

The dissolving of Jughead’s family was a perfectly civil matter. Jellybean was working on a school project in her room and was not to be disturbed under any circumstance, Jughead was at the kitchen counter gobbling down the Oreos his mom had brought home as a special surprise, his father was leaning on the stove across from him- eyes focused for the first time in seemingly forever- and his mom was sitting beside him knitting Jellybean her own beanie. If you closed one eye to block out the ratty couch and the beer bottles ill concealed beneath it, you might even be able to believe that they were a normal family.

His mom cleared her throat meaningfully and glanced at his dad, who simply raised his eyebrows in response. She gritted her teeth and stabbed the needle just a bit more forcefully into the wool. That wasn’t that unusual, though, and Jughead had just unconcernedly shoveled in three new cookies, when his mom took a deep breath, met his eyes and said, “How would you feel if Jellybean and I moved in with your grandparents?”

It didn’t really register in his mind for a second. He answered robotically, his mouth full and his mind preoccupied with how many cookies were left. “Like for permanent?”

His mom glanced at his father again. “Well… for now, at least.”

Jughead paused for a second, brow crinkling as he tried to reconcile the seemingly simple words with the uncharacteristic gentleness in her eyes. “But you’ll visit?”

His father spoke then, his voice rough. “No.”

His mom broke in. “That is _not_ true, FP," she screeched. "Don’t you _dare_ act like I am the villain here!”

It’s the return to the usual “family dynamic” that helps him piece it together. “Ohhhh. So we’d leave until Dad figures out stuff? Yeah, okay. Sounds good.”

He stuffs more cookies in his mouth and starts chewing them enthusiastically. That’s when he realizes that his chewing is unnaturally loud. I mean, he took a lot of cookies, sure, but, the only sound in the whole friggen house is his mouth dismembering the helpless Oreos. He pulls his focus away from the cookies for the first time since his mom had brought them home.

His dad is staring at him with the weirdest expression Jughead has ever seen on his face. It’s kinda like the way he looked at him the day Jughead had first come home with a split lip courtesy of Reginald Mantle and sort of the way he’d looked when he’d had to kill the trailer park cat but more a mixture of the two, as if Jughead is the most pitiable creature he’s ever seen, as if he’s so irreparably broken that he needs to be put out of his misery.

He turns to his mom, but she won’t meet his eyes. That’s when it all slots in, like when you finally find the perfect word to describe something and it’s like the whole world makes sense and your fingers can’t type fast enough to keep up with what you’re saying… but also not like that at all.

“Just you and Jellybean?” His voice cracks on her name and it should upset him more that he doesn’t even really dwell on losing his mom, once his only friend and confidante in the whole damn world.

No, it’s the thought of not having his sister that causes the telltale burn of tears in the back of his eyes. Who will he dance with in their crappy kitchen when neither parent has intentions of being home for hours? Who will mock his inability to cook when his mom has left him in charge of dinner again? Who will he boost into the projection booth at the drive in so that they can watch the movies together and she won’t have to pay? Who will be left for him to convince that everything’s okay when everything is decidedly not?

Without her, what reason is there to even _be_ okay?

His mom doesn’t say anything. It’s his dad- Jughead will never ever forget that it is his dad- who steps around the counter and rests a hand on his shoulder before confirming, “Your mom and Jellybean.”

That gets his mom speaking. “There’s not enough room for two children at your grandparent’s house- you know that. They have dogs who sleep on the couches and no air mattresses and…” Her voice trails off, as if expecting him to respond. He doesn’t.

“It’s not that I don’t want you to come with us. I just-,” she sighs, “I need you to be the big brother here. You wouldn’t want me to leave Jelly behind, would you?”

His head snaps back up from where he had been studying his shoes intently. “No! Of course not!”

And somehow that settles it.

It’s not until much later that he thinks about it. He lies awake in the freezing drive-in booth and wonders whether it was an easy decision for her. He wonders if she even hesitated before deciding to leave him behind. He wonders if she ever thinks about him when she heads to bed and passes the dog infested couch. He wonders if the reason she always takes so long to answer the phone is because she’s not sure she wants to.

He asks his dad once, shortly after they’ve gone, back when sober nights were only rare not nonexistent. His dad is watching TV and Jughead’s trying to type but he can’t, because the keys are so loud. It’s always  _so_ _quiet_ in the house now, and he couldn’t tell you whether it was legitimate curiosity or the overwhelming need to fill the mocking silence that caused him to blurt out, “Mom wanted to take me, right?”

His dad winces, and he should feel bad. He always tries so hard to make his dad feel a little less alone, in the naïve hope that it will keep him home that evening. But now that Jughead has said the words, he desperately needs to know. “Like she tried to figure out a way to take me too? Asked Grandma or looked into buying another bed or tried to find a cheap apartment or-.”

His dad cuts off his increasingly panicked speech by reaching his hand over and placing it on Jughead’s knee. He waits until Jughead looks at him to emphatically say, “Of course she did, Jug.”

But his dad’s been lying to him his whole life, and he’s never been any good at it.

 

After the party and the dance and the subsequent smashing of his heart by his own hand, Jughead goes back into the bar to look for his dad. What he wants to ask is “When are you going home?” What he expects to say is something far more meaningful. Something along the lines of “Are you going to be okay?” or “Did I do the right thing with Betty?” Maybe even “Do you blame me?”

What he actually asks is something even deeper, something that prods at a wound he’d almost forgotten existed. “Did you push Mom away on purpose?”

His dad is helping pick up leftover bottles and he jerks at the words, dropping one of them. The two men stare as the dark liquid remnants of the bottle spread across the floor of the bar. Jughead’s propelled back to the first time FP had come home drunk and his mom had spent the entirety of the next morning scrubbing furiously at the beer stain in the carpet. FP is thinking that it looks a lot like the Blossom boy’s blood. Neither makes a move to clean it up.

An older Serpent Jughead doesn’t know shakes his head and bends down to wipe up the mess himself, jerking them out of their trance.

“To protect her, you mean? No. I didn’t. I’d already tried that with someone else, and for whatever your old man’s opinion is worth, it’s the worst decision I’ve ever made.”

“Wait,” Jughead says confusedly, “what? The worst decision you made was _not_ to protect Mom?”

FP sighs having. “No. The worst decision I ever made had surprisingly nothing at all to do with your mother.”

He's being so vulnerable with Jughead, in a way that he never has before, not even when he had finally told him about Clifford Blossom's threat against his life. It frees Jughead up, enough to pursue something he's always needed to know but been afraid to ask.

“I don’t understand.”

FP’s voice takes on a different quality- one he recognizes from the rare times his father would read to him before bed. “It might surprise you to know that I was young too, Jughead. Admittedly it was a long time ago, but I was young and foolish and in love once myself. I would have cut out my own tongue to give her a voice- and that was what she wanted most. She wanted to be listened to and respected…. In short, she wanted as far away from the Southside as possible. But she…,” his father’s eyes drift toward the stage, the stage where less than an hour ago, his Betty- his beautiful, brilliant, independent, femme fatale Betty- had stood, “she gave that all up for me. She decided to stay here. She decided to stay with me. She chose _me_ over… everything else.

‘And I was elated, Jughead. I was so in love and so happy and so certain we’d figure it all out anyway.... But I was young... and foolish... and in love. And soon when I looked at her shining eyes, I asked myself what I was thinking. And when she slid her head into the crook between my head and shoulder, I asked myself how I could let her give it all up for me. And when she pressed her lips to mine, I asked myself whether she wouldn’t one day hate me for it.”

Jughead is frozen. He’s never heard any of this. He’d never even imagined either of his parents ever being in love- not even with each other. The whole scene feels intimate and private. He’s not sure whether his dad even remembers that his son is there. His eyes are fixed on the stage and his face is full of longing and grief and something so precious and foreign that Jughead can’t quite define it.

“It all came to a head, because it always does. The best moments of my life are intertwined with the worst.” Jughead almost snorts at that, because it must be hereditary, but his dad is still talking. “She told me she loved me. It was so casual- just like her to say it like that. I’d been sitting on top of the bar counter, right there,” FP’s eyes drift behind Jughead now, through him, as if he is not there, “and she comes waltzing in out of nowhere, plops down on the stool beside me and says, ‘They closed the Red and Black.’

Jughead startles at that. The old newspaper at the Southside? Had his dad been involved in journalism too?

“I remember sitting up as straight as I could then. I was ready to comfort her, or drink with her, or, hell, march myself down there and see whether I couldn’t force the administration to bring the stupid thing back. But she’s grinning at me, and it caught me off guard. It was the last thing I expected to see. ‘You okay?’ I remember asking her it kinda wonky like, as if she had lost her mind a bit. And she leans forward and puts her hand on my arm. ‘I am now, FP’- she coined the name, you know that?” Without waiting for an answer, FP plows on. “So she says to me, ‘All I needed to do was see you’ and I must just be giving her the dumbest expression known to man, because she sighs all melodramatically and says really slowly- like I was a moron, you know? ‘Whenever I see you, I just feel like everything’s gonna be okay. Like no matter what, we’ll figure it out.’

FP’s voice trails off and Jughead stops breathing- in case the sound would throw his dad back to reality. Regardless of whether this moment was intended for him or not, he’s here and he's in too deep now and he wants to know the whole story- so sue him, he’s an author.

When his dad starts speaking again, there’s a roughness to his voice. It’s the same sound Jughead’s gets when he’s trying not to cry, and after the parking lot, it sounds a little too familiar for comfort. “That was a _good_ moment…. One of the best…. For just a second, I believed her. I believed that whatever happened, we’d figure it out. And then she whacked my arm and sassed, ‘Since apparently, I have to hit all the milestones in this relationship myself, this is me saying that I love you.’ She gave me her trademark little smirk and leaned in to kiss me. But I pushed her away.” His dad’s voice cuts off and he takes a deep breath before continuing.

“I was so sure she was wrong. We couldn’t beat anything. Some things are unbeatable, and she had to get her dream. She couldn’t love me, because she’d lose the dream and that was what mattered most…. And, you know,” FP says, as if just realizing it himself, “all these years later, I still don’t know that I was wrong. Maybe if I’d married her, you’d have blonde hair and she’d be living in Malibu with her parents and our second child. Or maybe I’d be as happy as I was then…. I guess it’s the ‘maybe’ that keeps pulling me back to the bottle. I don’t know, I _can’t_ know…. But I don’t think I can ever stop wondering either.”

With a suddenness that startles Jughead, his dad seems to rouse himself. His eyes are no longer looking through him, but right at him. “Sorry about that. This night was… it brought forth a lot of old memories.”

Jughead wants to ask more, but he doesn’t even know what to say. It doesn’t matter anyway. His dad’s powering through the awkward moment, as he always does.

“Anyway, to answer your question: no I didn’t. Maybe I should have. Or maybe your mom and I were never gonna work. Your mom was an amazing lady, Jug. I found her when I needed her and I will always love her for that. But… well, you never forget your first love.”

Jughead hopes that isn’t true, memories of brilliant blue eyes brimming with tears- tears that he had caused- already sure to take their place in the nightmare queue.

“Or maybe you do. Maybe it’s just because us Jones fall in love with-” his dad stops speaking with an abruptness Jughead would dwell on more, if his heart didn’t ache so much. FP clears his throat and tries again. “We know how to find the One In A Million’s, Jug. Speaking of,” his dad grins at him, “what are you doing around here? Go. Be with your girl.” He steps closer and clasps Jughead on the shoulder. “Don’t _stop_ being with her.”

Jughead should tell him… but he doesn’t. FP is sure to find out soon enough, considering the entire parking lot had witnessed the whole thing. Instead, he screws up his courage to ask, “What happened to her?”

FP jerks, apparently sunk in memories again. “Who?”

Jughead smiles, hoping his dad won’t notice how it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Your One In A Million.”

“Oh. Well,” FP’s smile reflects his own, “she got everything she ever wanted.”

“Except you.” The words pop out before he can think them through.

“Yeah.” FP snorts. “I suppose except for me.”

“Was it hard? Watching her… succeed and be happy? She is happy, right?” He doesn’t know why he’s asking, unless it’s that he clearly has a masochistic streak.

“Well, that’s maybe the worst part. She’s happy… I think. But I can never look at her without that damn 'maybe' haunting me again… if maybe, just maybe, she  _might_ have been happier with me…. It’s the worst feeling in the world, Jug. I do not recommend it. It’ll have you reaching for a bottle before you can even think about it.”

Jughead leaves then. He practically bolts from the bar. He can’t hear this, not right now. The lines that separate him from his father have been blurring lately and he’s been okay with it, because he’s had a place to belong for the first time in forever. But all this rehashing of the past has done is confirm that the lines are too blurry- dangerously blurry. Jughead recognizes a disturbing amount of himself in 16-year-old FP Jones II. But more than that, Jughead recognizes a frightening amount of himself in 47-year-old FP Jones II.

And he can already tell that waking up hungover and alone in an empty trailer, dwarfed by regret and self hatred, is also joining the nightmare queue- heading straight to the very top.

 

They only talk about it once. It’s the second or third phone call since she moved and she can’t seem to shut up about how great Toledo is and how happy they are and how Jellybean just fit right into the new school and how it feels like they’ve been given a new lease on life and he’s blurting out before he can stop himself, “Do you regret it?”

It’s extremely quiet over the phone line and he wishes he could take it back, because he can’t lose these calls too, he can’t, he won’t survive that. He opens his mouth to retract it just as she answers him.

“How can I, Jughead, she says, softly and slowly, as if speaking to a wounded animal. “Of course, I didn’t want it to come to this, but how can I regret it when I feel so happy, when I feel alive for the first time in forever? How can I regret the action when the result is the best thing that’s ever happened to me?”

He wants to keep it going. He wants to say, “Is it that simple for you? Am I the only one torn by this?” Because he wants her to be happy, of course he does. He just wants to be happy with her. Hell, he’d settle for her even asking him how he is... for her realizing that her new lease on life meant the end of his own.

But he doesn’t.

Because he can’t lose these calls too. He can’t. He won’t survive that.

(In class a week later, they discuss the timeless debate: does the end justify the means? And Jughead Jones shocks the whole class when he rises from his self-imposed exile at the back of the room to emphatically state that no, it does not.)

 

Jughead had planned out the whole thing. He was going to be methodical and quick. He did not want to cause Penny pain, not really, and he definitely didn’t want to get his hands any bloodier than they needed to be.

He didn’t count on her moving.

If she would just sit still, he probably could have done a decent job of it. But she’s screaming and cursing him and jerking around and there is so much blood and it’s hard to even see where the snake is anymore and his hands are shaking and when did that happen and he’s fairly certain that this counts as actual cold-blooded mutilation now.

He can’t see what’s going on anymore, but she’s started crying- actually sobbing- and he’s dropped the knife and stepped away from her before he’s registered the decision to do so.

They’re all looking at him with blind admiration, and he realizes they expect him to tell them what to do next. The thought makes him want to throw up.

“Let’s get out of here.” His voice cracks and his hands are still shaking, but their devotion doesn’t waver for an instant. They all hop on their bikes, but don’t leave until after he does, so that he’s leading the parade of bikes- the place reserved for his dad.

This means that he has to wait until he’s back in the trailer to clean up. The blood has run all the way to his elbows and it has dried now. He has to scrub until his skin feels raw and even then, he knows it isn’t all gone. But he has to stop, because with a sudden jolt, he’s bent over the sink, emptying his stomach into the bloody water. That sight causes his stomach to lurch and he throws up again.

He stands there, bent over his kitchen sink for what seems like forever. His stomach is empty but he can’t seem to stop heaving. As soon as he feels like he has it under control, he remembers the way the knife had slid into her skin, or how unexpectedly warm her blood was, or he turns his head and sees The Cupboard. He already couldn’t look at it without remembering Betty splayed out against it, the promise of her love shining from her eyes, and the thought of Betty right now just causes a fresh round of heaving.

He's not sure how long it takes him to stop. When he finally does, he can barely stand and tears are running down his face, though whether they are a result of the dry heaving or _every other damn_ _thing_ in his life, he doesn’t know.

It’s somewhere in between that moment- maybe the worst one of his life- and the moment he tells his dad that he is proud of who he is, that he realizes... he really is.

Yes, it was an objectively terrible thing to do, but it was also self defense. Penny wasn’t just hurting him, she was dragging all of the Serpents down. She had needed to be stopped and he had done it. And now? People were listening to him. He’d earned their respect and loyalty and he could make a difference.

Yes, it was a terrible thing he had done, and he was sorry for it.

But... it’s also really hard to feel sorry for the action itself when he’s gliding through the fallout.

(It’s not until the middle of the night that he realizes who he sounds like, and the revelation keeps him from sleep for the rest of the week.)

 

“Hey. Am I interrupting?” Jughead stands in the doorway of the Blue and Gold, either surprised or relieved to see her there with Kevin.

He’s never been so unsure of his feelings with regard to her. This whole thing was so confusing. As much as he hated the stilted awkward friendship they had now, it was _all_ they had now, and he needed it. Sometimes it felt like it was his only lifeline left.

Kevin said that Jughead was, in fact, interrupting, but she said no, and Kevin took his cue from her, though not without giving Jughead a dirty look. Kevin was somehow seemingly more upset about the breakup than either he or Betty. He had made many a comment when Betty wasn’t in the room about how Jughead had done the one thing Kevin asked him not to, insisting that he had “broken our girl and left me to pick up the pieces”. He was always so melodramatic. As if anything could truly break Betty Cooper or as if Kevin was any good at picking up pieces….

In the lounge earlier, Jughead had barely restrained from shoving him off the couch and putting himself down in the place beside her. How was he the only one who could see how badly she needed to just be able to talk about her brother without the self-appointed Welcome Committee™ blathering on about how good looking he is and how they need to meet him? Were they all blind? He never would have thought that he’d be grateful for a fight with Veronica Lodge, but at least it provided a welcome distraction.

(Of course, there was a time he was blind too. The difference was that she had let him see past her façade to the girl underneath. There’s a fitting irony to the fact that he is both the only one who can see it and the only one who has lost the right to do anything about it.)

 “By the way, I’m really digging Kevin’s new gossip column.” He tries for a light-hearted tone with just a hint of a sardonic bite to it as he enters their old stomping grounds. That’s how he used to talk, right?

A running mantra of ‘what would I say to Archie’ has been playing through his head since coming back to Riverdale High in the hopes of keeping all their interactions firmly on the side of friendship, but it’s also kinda starting to mess with his head.

Now that he looks back, he can admit to himself that Betty and Archie have never really been in the same category. There was always an underlying hope of something more with Betty… a hope that has been fulfilled and never can be again. He doesn’t want Betty in the same category as Archie and he doesn’t even know how to put her there. Also, he’s never wanted to pull Archie in between his legs and kiss him breathless before either… although, nothing works quite so well to dispel those thoughts about Betty than imagining his red-headed friend.

She’s indirectly brought up his transferring to Southside High in response to his comment and he knows she wants to talk about it- knows her better than he knows himself these days. But he can’t. So he doesn’t.

“I’m actually working on a story right now. Here.” He leans forward a bit from where he’s slouched across from her and hands her the file in a way that ensures their fingers won’t brush. “When I interviewed Toni’s grandfather for History class, he had some pretty intense things to say about General Pickens. But then, I did some follow-up research. General Pickens was hired by Barnabus B. Blossom to remove the Uktena tribe by force. Betty,” her eyes snap up to his, and he forgets all of it as she holds his gaze, “he killed 400 innocent men, women and children.”

“My God, that’s horrible.”

“And adding salt to the wound, the last remnants of the tribe, the Serpents, are being squeezed out of existence. Toni’s grandfather lives in a trailer the size of a broom closet. And Hiram Lodge is honoring this murderer, instead of trying to make amends. I think it’s a story we _need_ to tell.”

She nods slowly, giving him a moment to remember where they are and who they are. This is not Betts and Jug: crime-solving duo. This is Betty, the editor, and Jughead, the writer. This is Betty, his boss, and Jughead, her employee. This is Betty, the girl of his dreams, and Jughead, the one who shattered hers. This is Betty, who may very well blame the Serpents for taking him away from her and have no interest in defending them anymore, and Jughead, who isn’t entirely certain she would be wrong.

And then…

“Are you gonna try to get a quote from Hiram Lodge?”

Something warm bursts inside of him and he really needs to stop underestimating her one of these days. She grins at him after a second as if she knows what he’s thinking and they’ve both opened their mouths- him to thank her, her no doubt to tease him- when, as if a shroud has been draped over the whole room, they both remember themselves and slowly close them instead.

He should go, but she’s biting the edge of her bottom lip in that way that means she has something to say, she just needs some time to say it. He should go and let Kevin handle it, but he hasn’t exactly been impressed with Kevin’s handling so far. He should go but she’s looking at him now and he can tell she wants him to stay and, God help him, all he ever wanted was for her to want him to stay with her. So he really _really_ should go, but his body isn’t listening to him anyways and he finds himself leaning forward and opening his arms.

She flings herself into them with a desperation that hurts him to the core of his being. And then they’re hugging again. He’s holding Betty Cooper for the first time in what feels like decades. Her arms are wrapped around him and her head still fits just under his chin and her hair smells the same and that is _not_ appropriate because he is her friend and he probably couldn’t tell you how Archie’s hair smelled if his life depended on it although Archie was taller than him so he’d never had the opportunity to bury his nose in Archie's hair and also Archie hugs like a wimp while Betty hugs like she means it, she always has and-

“I miss you… I feel so crazy lately and I just… I _miss_ you.”

He’s so caught up in his bordering on ridiculous mental tangent that he almost misses the words whispered like a secret into his collarbone. Almost.

There’s an ache in her words, a wound that he longs to dress. But he can’t. He is the cause of it and you don’t heal a cut by slapping a knife on it. She needs the opposite of him right now and he needs to go before he tells her that he misses her too, that all he wants is to freeze this moment and live in it, that he dreams of that day in Pops every night- only in his dreams, he says yes and they hop on his motorcycle and drive away from this godforsaken town to a place where murder is just a part of TV shows and Serpents a part of mythology.

So he pulls away… again.

“I should head to class. If I’m late one more time, I have to take a trip to the principal’s office and I’m getting a little tired of seeing my reflection in the top of Weatherbee’s head.”

It’s a lie and he’s sure she knows it, because her face actually _crumples_ for a second… but just for a second. And then, as if she’s been painted over with a brush of indifference, her posture straightens and her hands tighten (and oh God, if that doesn’t almost bring him back to her side) and her face turns blank.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble. You do that well enough on your own.”

Her laugh is fake but then so is his. He gives her a sarcastic salute and has almost made it through the door when he stops and looks back. Her walls have fallen in the expectation that he had gone, and she looks like she did that day in her bedroom. Right before he had-

She’d looked like she was drowning and he hadn’t been able to help throwing her whatever he had- pitiful as it was- just to give her something to hold onto.

“Hey. We’re _all_ crazy.”

Some things never change.

She takes a deep breath and gives him a small smile and he knows he should say more. Remind her that “we’re not our parents”, but he can’t. Not this time. And not even because it will bring back too many memories for both of them.

But because he doesn’t think that he believes it any more… and he’s never been any good at lying to Betty Cooper.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from quote by Richard Eyre:  
> "Our parents cast long shadows over our lives. When we grow up, we imagine that we can walk in the sun, free of them. We don't realize, until it's too late, that we have no choice in the matter; they're always ahead of us."


End file.
